By: Terng Shing Chen, CEO and Founder, SYNC PR

We’re living in the age of technological breakthroughs and in some cases, disruption, but by-and-large there hasn’t been significant disruption in the last few years for the marketing and PR industry. Or at least, that’s what people think.

Marketing impacts our daily lives whether we want it to or not and with the advent of social media, smartphones and our reliance on a connected world, marketing has new avenues and opportunities to touch our lives. From an online ad to an article in a newspaper, we’re being bombarded by brand mentions, images and subtle messages aimed at changing perception. This isn’t new, but the scope and channels through which they are reaching us are.

So there is an ongoing disruption in the marketing industry, which is almost invisible to the public due to the complexity and size of the marketing industry. Each year there have been new technologies introduced into the marketing industry that affect both brands and marketers in general.

For the general consumer or brand to understand the shifting dynamics of the marketing industry would be challenging to say the least. To make it easier to understand, I’ve compiled the most impactful technology disruptors that are taking over the marketing industry right now.

Programmatic placement is the new norm

Programmatic marketing or placement is the automated bidding process on advertising inventory in real time, for the opportunity to show an ad to a specific customer. You see this most noticeably on Google and Facebook ads.

Programmatic placement has been growing its share of the advertising pie for almost a decade and has evolved beyond the internet into native mobile formats, broadcast and even out-of-home media.

Public relations technology is now a thing

Automation technology is helping PR firms scale faster and more efficiently than ever before. Companies like SYNC are using technology to free up employee time to do what brands actually want – use their creativity and skill to achieve real results.

This is just the beginning for PR or the Public Relations industry. As AI continues to evolve, there is even the potential to replace the human-aspect of PR with algorithms built to help brands reach out to publications for coverage. This is far off in the future, but we’re seeing great strides in this arena.

Bots are getting smarter

Marketing is moving beyond simple automatic responses and into the conversational bots that are able to converse and replicate real conversation either through voice or over a messaging channel. This is impacting the way brands can interact and engage with consumers.

Voice marketing is a reality we’re still getting used to

Amazon Echo and Google Home have made voice assistants commonplace, but even as we speak Voice Marketing is changing the industry. Brands around the world are starting to invest in voice marketing through improved search and are constantly looking for ways to integrate the technology.

Southeast Asia and Singapore are still catching on, but the trend is moving towards a Voice-first industry.

Marketing = Data collection and analysis

Creativity and the ‘Mad Men’ days are long behind us as marketers are now data analysts who develop strategies based on the data that they receive. This has changed the overall style of marketing and driven (mostly consumer-focused) brands towards a similar look and feel for most marketing strategies.

From most brands focussing on video content to adopting a brighter colour scheme for video content – brands are driven by rapidly changing consumer demands and are less focused on developing a consistent brand and marketing image.

Atomic content strategy makes personalisation better

Atomic, in this case, refers to the creation and customisation of small content elements or as they are known in the industry, ‘Atoms’, which is copy, images, and video, that is assembled to create videos, emails, web pages or other marketing assets tailored to the consumer’s actions.

Depending on the complexity of the digital platform, it can even look at purchase history, potential lifetime value of the consumer based on profiles, demographic data and so on, to create a personalised marketing message tailored to convert you to a paying customer.